Topic: Zagreb Diary 
** Written  3:01 PM  Jul 30, 1992 by wam@zamir-zg.comlink.apc.org in gn:yugo.antiwar **

Zagreb Diary
28-07-1992

Dobar Dan,

Let me start to say that the biggest part of Croatia is absolutely safe to travel and to work. Still most volunteer and visitors from abroad are asking it when or before they arrive, is it absolute safe, is it true that there are snippers in Zagreb, etc. Yes, it is absolute safe, and there are no snippers in Zagreb, not in Osijek, not even in Karlovac or in Slavonski Brod. War maybe war, but it has it's own unwritten rules. One of those rules seems to be that you should not shoot outside the obvious war areas.

Ofcourse the rumours are there that whenever there will be a Croatian try to get into Baranja with weapons Zagreb will be attacked, but 3 months ago I was much more afraid of that than now. Still I am not going to tell it to the volunteers on their first day here. War has to come in doses, if you take too much at the same time it will blow your mind and you can't take it anymore.

It is like cruelty it also have to be build up, before you start to understand what happened. It is too much you hear them saying, I don't understand it anymore. I said the same thing 3 months ago, I don't understand it anymore. Maybe I still don't understand the whole situation, but I understand more and more the mechanism which lead to this. Important to start with understanding is to say that nobody is an absolute fool and that nobody starts to shoot at anybody if he or she has no reason for it.

Like our neighbour at the Center e.g., the guy (about 60 years old) can become very angry ones and a while, even comes down to demolish our bikes or postbox, but mostly he shout at somebody from his balcony. It sound weird but after a while we found the reason. The guy could buy the house we are in 30 years ago, but hadn't the money at that time, now he consider it still as his house. On top of it our Center is visited by strangers, from abroad, even from Beograd, that is not normal. Some much foreigners that can't be kosher. Yesterday he went so angry on a French volunteer who absolute didn't knew what happened to him, that he became real violent. Already he phoned the police a few times, telling them that we were planning something, but they don't take him serious anymore. That's also life you know.

Life is also aggression of cars against bikers and pedestrians. Okay, I admit I am not the nicest biker myself, but biking in Zagreb is fighting a private war against cars, traffic lights and tram ways. From all cities I have been to most un polite car drivers can be found in Zagreb. It seems often that they out there to get you on your bike. You have to fight you way through. Nothing special, after their driving wheels a lot of people get a strong feeling, this is my car, this is were I want to drive.

No for every thing is a reason, not that every step or move a human makes is good, but it is too easy to consider it as an act of idiocy which came over this countries. 

Some of the volunteers come here with the idea that most of the people are half wild, uncivilised, since civilised people don't fight, Croats and other EX-YU are like cannibals, never came out of the stone-age. That's not true, of course this countries needs help, a lot even, but not in the way that the civilised west is helping poor wilds. There is a lot of knowledge in these countries, but even that is not a reason. It is a basic behaviour. Every culture has his own habits, his or her own way of doing things. Helping don't means pushing your culture into another one. It is a process of understanding, respecting each other, they way we think, they way we do things, etc.

One of the best environmental leaflets I know is made in Brazil by a Brazilian environmental group called "SAVE THE NORTH SEA". They translated one of the thousand European leaflets about the Amazonia and started a similar action to safe the North Sea. They describe the European as wild people who destroy their own sea, their own sources of life.

If I am reading Dutch newspapers here I have sometimes also the feeling that the rest of the world is more mad than the people in these countries. Looking from here you may ask yourself why in the world are they making so much noise about such a small thing. What went into them, are they totally crazy over there.

A few minutes later I am in the supermarket and see, yes, the prices has been changed again, are they fools, who ever can think that this can continue like this. Where in the line is the breaking point that people say, sorry, but no more. 

Than I ask myself what will life be after the war, suddenly I realise again there is a war, something in the air what makes things happening in this countries from which I knew that they happened in history books. Talking with people from UNHCR, with the Red Cross, saying their trucks passing by, it all comes back to me. I am in a war, even when I don't hear the grenade exploding, or have to run for the snippers. 

For me it is remarkable that on none of the posters for this election the 12 stars from the EC has appeared, and slowly you see that symbol disappearing from the shops. No they are not getting replace with Un or USA symbols, you even can't say that they are being replaced by Croatian symbols, it is just if a symbol disappears, without getting something in return. You also wouldn't find the words "Ratna" "Ratne" or "Ratni"(or in how many ways you can write it) and "Mir" ("Mira" "Mirna") on any poster (maybe some, I haven't seen them). 

Of course the war and the UNPAs (United Nations Protected Areas) are discussed and often mentioned in these elections, but not on the posters (at least not directly), what that means I leave for your imagination.

Friday the first pople friends from us will arrive to take part in the observer teams, which are coming for the lections, Sunday is the magical date. Just four more nights sleeping and we have the day of .......... we will see what it will bring us.

With Love from ZA-mir-GREB,

Wam:-)



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